Its flights de­part­ing from Kaoh­si­ung af­ter 5 p.m. will be called off as well, in­clud­ing GE228, GE227, GE2282 and GE229.

The car­rier said de­par­ture time of some of its flights will be de­layed un­til Satur­day—in­clud­ing flights GE327 from Zhangji­a­jie to Taoy­aun at noon, and GE317 from Xuzhou, at 11:50 a.m.

Other de­layed flights in­clude GE335 from Shang­hai to Taipei Song­shan, to 1 p.m., GE303 from Shang­hai to Taoyuan, at 12:20 p.m., and GE3605 from Tokyo Narita to Taoyuan, at 1:20 p.m.

Ear­lier in the day, EVA Air­ways and Uni Air also an­nounced flight ad­just­ments.

Mil­i­tary Ready to Pro­vide

Res­cue As­sis­tance

The mil­i­tary said Thurs­day that it has opened an emer­gency cen­ter and mo­bi­lized ser­vice­men for dis­as­ter re­lief oper­a­tions as Typhoon Soude­lor nears and threat­ens to dump heavy rain­fall around Tai­wan be­gin­ning Fri­day.

The Cen­tral Weather Bureau is­sued a sea warn­ing ear­lier Thurs­day and a land warn­ing in the evening.

Amid the ap­proach­ing storm, the Min­istry of Na­tional De­fense said in a state­ment that more than 32,000 ser­vice­men have been placed on standby to pro­vide any nec­es­sary re­lief and res­cue as­sis­tance.

Two S-70C res­cue he­li­copters, 6 UH-1H chop­pers, one C-130 trans­port plane, and two CH-47SD he­li­copters are also ready to be dis­patched as needed, the min­istry said.

It added that more than 2,200 mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles, 137 in­flat­able boats and 435 wa­ter pumps can be made avail­able for res­cues.

Soude­lor is solid in struc­ture and may con­tinue grow­ing and it could make land­fall some­where be­tween Hualien and Taitung in eastern Tai­wan Fri­day af­ter­noon or evening, weather fore­cast­ers said.

On the storm’s cur­rent path, it could sweep across cen­tral Tai­wan on Satur­day be­fore head­ing to­ward China, ac­cord­ing to the weather bureau.